Question: Here's an argument you can settle. I know that for a while hick sitcoms were huge on TV, but I had an argument with a friend about the trend. Wouldn't you say it was The Andy Griffith Show that started them all? Thank you for your help. I know you won't let me down.
Answer: The Andy Griffith Show is the show that's remembered for breaking the rural-comedy trend wide open after it debuted in 1960, Randall, but the comedy that defied the experts who thought folks in the big markets didn't want to watch their country-folk cousins came along three years earlier: The Real McCoys, which was a runaway hit for ABC before jumping to CBS for a final season in 1962.
Funny thing was, the champions of hayseed humor weren't from anywhere near the territory. Irving Pi
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Question: In the mid-1960s, I think, Dennis Weaver starred in a show where he had an adopted Korean son, lived on a ranch and drove a convertible Mustang. What was the name of it? Thanks.
Answer: That would be the short-lived comedy-drama Kentucky Jones, which ran on NBC for a year beginning in September 1964. Weaver, coming off his nine-year stint as Chester Goode on the classic Gunsmoke, starred as veterinarian Kenneth Yarborough "Kentucky" Jones (he signed his name "K.Y."), who lived on a ranch in Southern Cal.
And the 9-year-old boy of whom you speak, Dwight Eisenhower "Ike" Wong (played by Ricky Der — apparently nifty nicknames were plentiful on this show), was Chinese, not Korean. Kentucky's wife had arranged to adopt the lad and then promptly died, leaving the widower vet to raise him alone.
Har
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